Carmen Madrigal, Lusamerica Fish

Carmen Madrigal at her desk at Lusamerica Fish

When you buy seafood directly from fishermen and women at dock sales there’s not much that goes into quality control and food safety: Fishermen catch the fish, clean the fish, put it on ice, then sell it to you still covered in that ice hours after it was caught. But for seafood companies like Lusamerica that buy and distribute seafood on a large scale, great care and concern must be taken to ensure seafood stays fresh at all times.

At the Lusamerica Fish facility in Morgan Hill, Carmen Madrigal is the person in charge of making sure all quality control and safety procedures are followed, so that when seafood finally makes it to your plate it tastes as if it were recently pulled from the ocean. As quality safety manager, Carmen makes rounds through the processing facility checking temperatures, assessing cleanliness, and managing a team of quality control technicians.

Carmen at work in the processing facility

“I want customers to know the care we take to ensure the freshness of fish,” she says.

Carmen took over as food safety manager around the turn of 2022, but she has worked at Lusamerica for eight years. She started as a quality control technician, which she worked for five years before being promoted to quality control supervisor.

She has always been fond of seafood, growing up along the Pacific Ocean in Tijuana, Mexico. For nearly two decades Carmen has lived in Hollister with her husband and four kids, including 3-year-old twins. She started working in quality control at plastic companies that made trays for produce grown on the Central Coast, before moving to seafood.

“I like seafood because there’s a lot of variety,” she says.

Between work and family, Carmen admits she doesn’t spend much time cooking but does like salmon and Dover sole. She notes that both only need a little salt, pepper, and seasoning and pan-seared in olive oil for a quick and tasty meal.